Why read In Search of Wealth and Power?

Book cover of In Search of Wealth and Power: Yen Fu and the West

Book description

In a serious effort to divine the secret of the West's success in achieving wealth and power, Yen Fu, a Chinese thinker, undertook, at the turn of the century, years of laborious translation and commentary on the work of such thinkers as Spencer, Huxley, Adam Smith, Mill, and Montesquieu. In…

Explore

Topics

Genres

Political

When you buy books, we may earn a commission that helps keep our lights on (or join the rebellion as a member).

Why read it?

1 author picked In Search of Wealth and Power as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Dean Kostantaras

Author

This book was recommended to me in graduate school and was a natural fit for the kind of comparative research I was then busy with concerning the global dispersion of national ideas among cultural elites in the nineteenth century. That story is contextualized here through an examination of the life and thought of Yen Fu (1854-1921). Shwartz's work was immediately praised as a model for such a study and continues to appear frequently in bibliographies and course reading lists.

From Dean's list on The best books which document the spread of nationalism throughout the modern world.